Vallee on occult films (Eyes Wide Shut, the 9th Gate) etc.

[Cordelia]

i am sure i must have found this here at RI in the first place, so apologies to whoever brought this to my attention.
i don't agree with everything this guy says, but a lot of it is thought provoking at least....

^^Ditto

http://www.collativelearning.com/EYES%2 ... lysis.html

[compared2what?]

ok, i found it:
"MAZES, MIRRORS, DECEPTION AND DENIAL"
i am sure i must have found this here at RI in the first place, so apologies to whoever brought this to my attention.
i don't agree with everything this guy says, but a lot of it is thought provoking at least....

Wow. Myself, I don't agree with that Rob Ager about practically anything. But I totally LOVE almost everything he says anyway. And that's a rare and valuable thing. Although I've got to say that even he doesn't agree with himself about Eyes Wide Shut, imo. To the point that I even felt a little distressed for him at the very end of that piece. Because....Hm. Well. I'm not sure how to put it. But it's sort of like: He's an exceptionally honest and original thinker, as well as an exceptionally honest and original writer. And, obviously, you pretty much can't help noticing that. But since he's also so exceptionally unselfconscious about it that after a few sentences, you also pretty much can't help ceasing to notice it very loudly. It feels so much more natural to just fall into step with him and follow along. Or anyway, it does to me. So I found this...

Due to EWSs stunning intricacy and complexity this has been by far the most difficult and time consuming film analysis I have written to date (now superceded by the unbelievable complexity of unravelling 2001: A Space Odyssey), but it has been well worth the effort.

Once we begin to notice the carefully crafted meanings in EWS’s narrative and visuals it makes perfect sense that the film is slowly paced with lingering unedited shots. The images are almost like paintings and Kubrick draws them out so that we are forced to pay attention to the symbolically potent details. This shows up modern fast-paced Hollywood films for what they really are – assembly line products that rely on over-editing to disguise their intellectual and artistic emptiness.

In a modern world that is rife with infidelity, lies, hedonism and sexual decadence Stanley is encouraging us all to throw away our masks and take a good look in the mirror. His final and most underestimated masterpiece is a call for an end to all forms of secrecy, be they personal, social or political.

Whether EWS was chopped and changed by the studios after Kubrick’s death is of little consequence. His messages still come through loud and clear for those who are willing to watch it with eyes wide open.

Bravo Stanley. RIP

.... very jarring. Because after the part about 2001 and the amount of work he put into his EWS analysis, It's sort of like: There I am, figuratively ambling along and having a nice congenially relaxed conversation with my nice, new interesting companion Rob Ager, when -- totally out of the blue -- he suddenly starts talking really fast and sounding really nervous. Then the next thing I know, I'm standing in the pleasant country lane down which he's been leading me all by myself, watching his dwindling back as he runs for the hills, asking myself what I did wrong.

IOW, there's a very abrupt change in tone there. And it felt forced and artificial to me. So I think (or maybe just hope) that he'll be returning to the subject some day.

But thanks so much for the linkage. It was like a little holiday reading him.

[brainpanhandler]

one observation about The Shining that seems legit to me is that all of the continuity 'errors' in the film are deliberate and are present to instill a subconscious feeling of unease in the viewer.

Yah, this was about all I took away from Ager's analysis of The Shining, which is still quite a lot, although I think the spatial distortions serve more than the purpose of creating confusion and disease. Of course this is the sort of stuff I love about Kubrick's films. There really is nothing superfluous, so everything reveals something about Kubrick's intent. I skimmed the last few chapters and then had a similar experience to yours c2w wrt the abrupt end, except with the Shining analysis there's not even the tonal change to prepare the reader for slamming into a dead end. There's no summation, no conclusion, just....

Which feels a little like being left at the dead end of one of the impossible spaces in the lodge.

I couldn't help but occasionally compare Ager's analysis to the sort of thing Hugh does, if that makes sense. I mean, for instance, the native american angle. Ager adopts a thesis and then goes to incredible lengths to try to support it with ever more distorted minutia. Ya know? Like for instance, Crothers does not look even vaguely native american. Or for another instance, every character comes to represent just about every other character in Ager's analysis based on the slightest of resemblences, which would be ok if the entire thing was the dream of one person, which in a way it is, namely Kubrick's, but I don't think that is what is going on.

In the end Kubrick intends ambiguity, the bastard. The Shining has always struck me as an anomaly among Kubrick's work. While much of the weirdness in the film can be explained with nightmares and madness, not all of it can be explained in that way. I mean, how the hell did Jack get out of the pantry?



He does say this:

I still have several pages of notes about The Shining. Most will consist of updates and additions to the existing chapter, although an additional chapter or two will possibly be needed.

and he's right, but he would need to do a lot more than that.

I assume that either this interview was not avaliable when Ager wrote his analysis or he had not read it. It's a fascinating interview. Link at end. If you've never seen the film and want to then do not read this interview.

Michel Ciment: In several of your previous films you seem to have had a prior interest in the facts and problems which surround the story -- the nuclear threat, space travel, the relationship between violence and the state -- which led you to Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange. In the case of The Shining, were you attracted first by the subject of ESP, or just by Stephen King's novel?

Stanley Kubrick: I've always been interested in ESP and the paranormal. In addition to the scientific experiments which have been conducted suggesting that we are just short of conclusive proof of its existence, I'm sure we've all had the experience of opening a book at the exact page we're looking for, or thinking of a friend a moment before they ring on the telephone. But The Shining didn't originate from any particular desire to do a film about this. The manuscript of the novel was sent to me by John Calley, of Warner Bros. I thought it was one of the most ingenious and exciting stories of the genre I had read. It seemed to strike an extraordinary balance between the psychological and the supernatural in such a way as to lead you to think that the supernatural would eventually be explained by the psychological: "Jack must be imagining these things because he's crazy". This allowed you to suspend your doubt of the supernatural until you were so thoroughly into the story that you could accept it almost without noticing.

Do you think this was an important factor in the success of the novel?

Yes, I do. It's what I found so particularly clever about the way the novel was written. As the supernatural events occurred you searched for an explanation, and the most likely one seemed to be that the strange things that were happening would finally be explained as the products of Jack's imagination. It's not until Grady, the ghost of the former caretaker who axed to death his family, slides open the bolt of the larder door, allowing Jack to escape, that you are left with no other explanation but the supernatural. The novel is by no means a serious literary work, but the plot is for the most part extremely well worked out, and for a film that is often all that really matters.

Don't you think that today it is in this sort of popular literature that you find strong archetypes, symbolic images which have vanished somehow from the more highbrow literary works?

Yes, I do, and I think that it's part of their often phenomenal success. There is no doubt that a good story has always mattered, and the great novelists have generally built their work around strong plots. But I've never been able to decide whether the plot is just a way of keeping people's attention while you do everything else, or whether the plot is really more important than anything else, perhaps communicating with us on an unconscious level which affects us in the way that myths once did. I think, in some ways, the conventions of realistic fiction and drama may impose serious limitations on a story. For one thing, if you play by the rules and respect the preparation and pace required to establish realism, it takes a lot longer to make a point than it does, say, in fantasy. At the same time, it is possible that this very work that contributes to a story's realism may weaken its grip on the unconscious. Realism is probably the best way to dramatize argument and ideas. Fantasy may deal best with themes which lie primarily in the unconscious. I think the unconscious appeal of a ghost story, for instance, lies in its promise of immortality. If you can be frightened by a ghost story, then you must accept the possibility that supernatural beings exist. If they do, then there is more than just oblivion waiting beyond the grave.

This kind of implication is present in much of the fantastic literature.

I believe fantasy stories at their best serve the same function for us that fairy tales and mythology formerly did. The current popularity of fantasy, particularly in films, suggests that popular culture, at least, isn't getting what it wants from realism. The nineteenth century was the golden age of realistic fiction. The twentieth century may be the golden age of fantasy.

After Barry Lyndon did you begin work straight away on The Shining?

When I finished Barry Lyndon I spent most of my time reading. Months went by and I hadn't found anything very exciting. It's intimidating, especially at a time like this, to think of how many books you should read and never will. Because of this, I try to avoid any systematic approach to reading, pursuing instead a random method, one which depends as much on luck and accident as on design. I find this is also the only way to deal with the newspapers and magazines which proliferate in great piles around the house -- some of the most interesting articles turn up on the reverse side of pages I've torn out for something else.

Did you do research on ESP?

There really wasn't any research that was necessary to do. The story didn't require any and, since I have always been interested in the topic, I think I was as well informed as I needed to be. I hope that ESP and related psychic phenomena will eventually find general scientific proof of their existence. There are certainly a fair number of scientists who are sufficiently impressed with the evidence to spend their time working in the field. If conclusive proof is ever found it won't be quite as exciting as, say, the discovery of alien intelligence in the universe, but it will definitely be a mind expander. In addition to the great variety of unexplainable psychic experiences we can all probably recount, I think I can see behaviour in animals which strongly suggests something like ESP. I have a long-haired cat, named Polly, who regularly gets knots in her coat which I have to comb or scissor out. She hates this, and on dozens of occasions while I have been stroking her and thinking that the knots have got bad enough to do something about them, she has suddenly dived under the bed before I have made the slightest move to get a comb or scissors. I have obviously considered the possibility that she can tell when I plan to use the comb because of some special way I feel the knots when I have decided to comb them, but I'm quite sure that isn't how she does it. She almost always has knots, and I stroke her innumerable times every day, but it's only when I have actually decided to do something about them that she ever runs away and hides. Ever since I have become aware of this possibility, I am particularly careful not to feel the knots any differently whether or not I think they need combing. But most of the time she still seems to know the difference.

So you don't regard the apparitions as merely a projection of his mental state?

For the purposes of telling the story, my view is that the paranormal is genuine. Jack's mental state serves only to prepare him for the murder, and to temporarily mislead the audience.

And when the film has finished? What then?

I hope the audience has had a good fright, has believed the film while they were watching it, and retains some sense of it. The ballroom photograph at the very end suggests the reincarnation of Jack.

You are a person who uses his rationality, who enjoys understanding things, but in2001: A Space Odyssey and The Shining you demonstrate the limits of intellectual knowledge. Is this an acknowledgement of what William James called the unexplained residues of human experience?

Obviously, science-fiction and the supernatural bring you very quickly to the limits of knowledge and rational explanation. But from a dramatic point of view, you must ask yourself: 'If all of this were unquestionably true, how would it really happen?' You can't go much further than that. I like the regions of fantasy where reason is used primarily to undermine incredulity. Reason can take you to the border of these areas, but from there on you can be guided only by your imagination. I think we strain at the limits of reason and enjoy the temporary sense of freedom which we gain by such exercises of our imagination.

Of course there is a danger that some audiences may misunderstand what you say and think that one can dispense altogether with reason, falling into the clouded mysticism which is currently so popular in America.

People can misinterpret almost anything so that it coincides with views they already hold. They take from art what they already believe, and I wonder how many people have ever had their views about anything important changed by a work of art?

http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/ ... ew.ts.html

[IanEye]

I couldn't help but occasionally compare Ager's analysis to the sort of thing Hugh does, if that makes sense.

Makes sense to me.

Before we move on to the next chapter, if you’re not familiar with a lot of the conspiracy theories discussed here then you may well be jumping to a “Rob’s a bit of a nutter” conclusion. I’ve found that any mention of modern day conspiracies generates that reaction from a small number of readers, regardless of the evidence available. It basically amounts to wishful denial from people who want to maintain an illusion that modern governments care about their populations. Although I don’t necessarily believe in the Illuminati, the Committee of 300, the New World Order and so on I will say that the vast majority of centralized governments throughout history, be they Roman, Chinese, British, Russian, German or American, have shown themselves time and time again to be driven by the aspirations of corrupt groups of men who wish to live in luxury as an unchallenged elite. Only a fool could fail to recognise that fact. Kubrick knew it and, whether he successfully pointed his accusing finger at the right people or organizations is not a matter I can resolve on your behalf. This chapter is simply my attempt to help you hear Kubrick’s conspiratorial messages. Whether you believe those messages is up to you.

Hugh is sort of Rob Ager's Felix Leiter, or perhaps it is vice-versa...

[compared2what?]

So you don't regard the apparitions as merely a projection of his mental state?

For the purposes of telling the story, my view is that the paranormal is genuine. Jack's mental state serves only to prepare him for the murder, and to temporarily mislead the audience.

Ooo, initially, it looks like he comes thisclose to forgetting to carefully frame his remarks in terms that leave them capable of more than one interpretation in this answer. But on closer examination, it turns out that's just how it looks. As usual.

I actually thought that Ager was right about the non-figurative, non-metaphorical, and non-hypothetical Native American motifs and references. In that they're present and meaningful, and also in that they mean more or less what he understands them to mean. Which totally puts me in Rob Ager's debt, irrespective of his tendency to notice them whether they're there or not. Because I'd never noticed them at all, and they both enrich and support my subjective understanding of the general theme of that movie.

And, for that matter, all Stanley Kubrick movies, since as I subjectively understand them, they all have the same general theme. As well as some combination of the same set of more specifically elaborated-upon themes, typically. Which doesn't at all mean that his work is repetitive or that he doesn't have that much to say, imo. Any more than it would for the ouevre of any other major Western philosopher in the post-enlightenment part of the modern era. In fact....Well. I reserve the right to pretend that I never said this if it turns out to be incredibly stupid on further consideration. Because I haven't done the work of thinking it through yet.

So I might as well just go ahead and float the now risk-free hypothesis that he was pretty close to being as purely Nietzchean as Nietzsche probably would have been had he lived long enough to comment on how well 20th century civilization and the people responsible for it had lived up to the standards, principles and values expressed and advocated for by him in the work he did shortly before it commenced. And had the dimensions of his genius remained fully intact despite his very advanced age and any stresses to which they might have been subject during whatever process would have had to somehow transfer them from the medium of moral philosophy to that of the major motion picture.

Which I'm not just saying because of this. I mean, it's kinda obviously what triggered the whole line of thought to begin with and why bother pretending otherwise. Overall, at least on a casually (and possibly ill-considered) basis, I find it easier and more natural to think of works by Nietzsche and Kubrick as part of a single two-man genre than I do to attempt to understand either of them within the context of the field to which each formally belongs.

And anyway, even though that train of thought was (kinda obviously) triggered by the above-linked, it only really occurred to me in the form that I've been fully intending some day to sit down and do the work of thinking through for almost a decade now when I saw Eyes Wide Shut. Which is genuinely an exponentially more difficult movie to think about than the rest of his work. For me personally, at least. And also by far the hardest to watch. I mean, it's not like any of them are exactly cheery and reassuring. But I'd say that they're all joyous in some sense despite that, each in it's own way and to its own degree.*

Except for Eyes Wide Shut. Which I find not only to be an emotionally punishing work from start to finish but also beyond. It's kind of like the proverbial gift that never stops not giving. And very appropriately so, too. Given that it is, after all, a Christmas movie. Part of my point being that though I could so totally be wrong and am not really all that sure that I'm not, I at least think that it's a feature and not a bug that it's as difficult a movie as it is. IOW, I believe that it's willfully and obdurately difficult -- to the point of painful difficulty sometimes -- on just about every level. So it's not as a criticism or even a complaint that I say it's emotionally punishing to watch. I actually think it's a great movie. A masterpiece, even.

But I also think that it's a very bleak and all-encompassing indictment that spares no one and implicates everyone, including the director. And also everything, including itself. Albeit the last in a much, much more qualified way than the others. However, that's not really a qualification that can fairly be said to amount to all that much as a bleakness-mitigating factor, imo. Because no true work of art is ever seen as totally and utterly irredeemable from the Kubrickian perspective, at least as far as I can recall. Either intrinsically and extrinsically speaking, in any of his movies. And it's pretty much the only thing that any of them suggest (or at least come very close to suggesting) might have some redemptive qualities and uncompromised positive valuea. So I'd say the comparatively unindicted standing of the aesthetic realm in Eyes Wide Shut is less of an affirmative statement about anything than it is proof that it's possible to issue all-encompassing indictments or everyone and everything including yourself and to some extent your work without actually committing an act of heretical self-betrayal.

Besides which, qualifications don't really have all that far to go in order to be more qualified than an absolute. And apart from its very highly evolved (if notably clinically detached) sense of appreciation for truth and beauty of an aesthetic and/or artistic nature, the sense of condemnation in that movie strikes me as pretty fucking absolute. I mean, it somehow manages to condemn you just as much for understanding some or any elements of it as it does for failing to understand some or any elements of it.

But once again, I'm not really all that confident that I even have the response to that movie that I think and feel that I do. Because it's just inherently a very difficult movie. It's totally resolution-proof, for one thing. I mean, you can keep trying to reach a really satisfying conclusion about it if you want to, of course. That's what I plan on doing. But I can't say I didn't warn myself. Because I don't really expect ever to achieve anything by those attempts other than a glimpse of an even more multidimensionally emotionally punishing world than I've yet become aware of. Maybe. I'm not saying there are any guarantees or anything. I just might get lucky. You never know.

*(Per which scale, The Shining is practically a feel-good picture. I mean by my lights not his. Although it's arguably true by his, too. I'm just trying to keep the number of arguments I have yet to do the work of making to a minimum, out of consideration for both myself and the board.)
_____________________

I've said this before in at least on other post, I know. But to me, in its most stripped down and essential form, the entirety of all Kubrickian thought is as fully and powerfully expressed in the four or five seconds before and after the match-cut at @ 5.27 here as it is anywhere else. Though that's not exactly a totally unique and original observation, I admit. Also, it's a hyperbolic overstatement. Let's say a little more realistically maybe..."in the six or so minutes starting with the second use of "Thus Spake Zarathustra" at @ 2.01 to however far that takes you past the match cut into "The Blue Danube" sequence. Or, what the hell, just watch the whole movie.

And btw, I think it's very unfair that Richard Strauss enjoys such a disproportionately high meaning-of-2001-to-composition ratio, relative to Johann Strauss. And equally unfair that just because the "Thus Spake Zarathustra" at @2.01 in the linked clip is a callback to its use in the title footage, it's generally only associated with the connotations it acquires in the former. Which it doesn't really have at the beginning. Or anyway, wouldn't, if it hadn't become totally impossible not to think of the second use when you hear the first decades ago, at the very least. And probably within an hour of the premiere. Maybe before, if the promotional campaign included TV spots. Which I have no clue as to. Or, for that matter, if pre-release TV spots were even a routine part of movie promotion in 1968.

And....Well, the whole thing is a psyop, of course. But that should go without saying. So I guess that's pretty much it for me and rambling about Kubrick. For the evening.

[compared2what?]

Okay. I take it back.

I couldn't help but occasionally compare Ager's analysis to the sort of thing Hugh does, if that makes sense. I mean, for instance, the native american angle. Ager adopts a thesis and then goes to incredible lengths to try to support it with ever more distorted minutia. Ya know? Like for instance, Crothers does not look even vaguely native american. Or for another instance, every character comes to represent just about every other character in Ager's analysis based on the slightest of resemblences, which would be ok if the entire thing was the dream of one person, which in a way it is, namely Kubrick's, but I don't think that is what is going on.

It does make sense. But the pattern Ager sees not only really is there, but also really was put there by Kubrick and really does represent roughly what Ager understands it to, I'd say. So he's at least fundamentally correctly oriented and appropriately alert to the essential role played by the reciprocal relationship between context and content wrt metaphorically and symbolically conveyed meaning. It's just that for some reason, his ability to make those distinctions seems to have an auto-immune disorder that incapacitates him for the making of any further reliably meaningful distinctions almost immediately subsequent to his first exercise of it.

In the end Kubrick intends ambiguity, the bastard. The Shining has always struck me as an anomaly among Kubrick's work. While much of the weirdness in the film can be explained with nightmares and madness, not all of it can be explained in that way. I mean, how the hell did Jack get out of the pantry?

He's an artist and a human being. So there's no feat of miraculous creativity he's not capable of, as long as it's all guaranteed to lead to acts of senseless carnage and destruction that culminate in the destruction of everything he's created along with everything natural that he and his fellow men haven't already destroyed during the inherently unnatural act of creating other stuff, as we can safely presume they've been doing incessantly since the dawn of man via inferential reference to stuff like the near-genocide visited on Native Americans by Americans of Western European descent without which this land, which was made for you and me, could not have been created.

Silly.

[IanEye]

Silly.

- - -


"Repetition is a form of change." - Oblique Strategies




"Don't you think that one of the charms of marriage is that it makes deception a necessity for both parties?"

"Repetition is a form of change." - Oblique Strategies



inhale/exhaust

"Repetition is a form of change." - Oblique Strategies



Bill: Now, where exactly are we going... exactly?
Gayle: Where the rainbow ends.
Bill: Where the rainbow ends?
Nuala: Don't you want to go where the rainbow ends?
Bill: Well, now that depends where that is.
Gayle: Well, let's find out.

a rare storyboard panel of The Chevalier in a discarded scene from Barry Lyndon.
"Repetition is a form of change." - Oblique Strategies
.

[hanshan]

Okay. I take it back.

I couldn't help but occasionally compare Ager's analysis to the sort of thing Hugh does, if that makes sense. I mean, for instance, the native american angle. Ager adopts a thesis and then goes to incredible lengths to try to support it with ever more distorted minutia. Ya know? Like for instance, Crothers does not look even vaguely native american. Or for another instance, every character comes to represent just about every other character in Ager's analysis based on the slightest of resemblences, which would be ok if the entire thing was the dream of one person, which in a way it is, namely Kubrick's, but I don't think that is what is going on.

It does make sense. But the pattern Ager sees not only really is there, but also really was put there by Kubrick and really does represent roughly what Ager understands it to, I'd say. So he's at least fundamentally correctly oriented and appropriately alert to the essential role played by the reciprocal relationship between context and content wrt metaphorically and symbolically conveyed meaning. It's just that for some reason, his ability to make those distinctions seems to have an auto-immune disorder that incapacitates him for the making of any further reliably meaningful distinctions almost immediately subsequent to his first exercise of it.

In the end Kubrick intends ambiguity, the bastard. The Shining has always struck me as an anomaly among Kubrick's work. While much of the weirdness in the film can be explained with nightmares and madness, not all of it can be explained in that way. I mean, how the hell did Jack get out of the pantry?

He's an artist and a human being. So there's no feat of miraculous creativity he's not capable of, as long as it's all guaranteed to lead to acts of senseless carnage and destruction that culminate in the destruction of everything he's created along with everything natural that he and his fellow men haven't already destroyed during the inherently unnatural act of creating other stuff, as we can safely presume they've been doing incessantly since the dawn of man via inferential reference to stuff like the near-genocide visited on Native Americans by Americans of Western European descent without which this land, which was made for you and me, could not have been created.

Silly.

will have to quote you, c2w (w/ your permission, of course); if i'm looking for brilliant exposition,
need look no further (farther)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmWfTDZvvkM





....

[hanshan]

Silly.

- - -


"Repetition is a form of change." - Oblique Strategies




"Don't you think that one of the charms of marriage is that it makes deception a necessity for both parties?"

"Repetition is a form of change." - Oblique Strategies



inhale/exhaust

"Repetition is a form of change." - Oblique Strategies



Bill: Now, where exactly are we going... exactly?
Gayle: Where the rainbow ends.
Bill: Where the rainbow ends?
Nuala: Don't you want to go where the rainbow ends?
Bill: Well, now that depends where that is.
Gayle: Well, let's find out.

a rare storyboard panel of The Chevalier in a discarded scene from Barry Lyndon.
"Repetition is a form of change." - Oblique Strategies
.

hilarious, Ian

kudos
....

[brainpanhandler]

I apologize in advance for the cut and paste method of response I am going to employ here. As op ed has pointed out in the past it’s a method that by it’s nature seems antagonistic. It’s not intended that way. Rather there was no way I could imagine of responding to your typically dense exposition without cutting it up into manageable bits. And besides, as you must have noticed by now, I do best riffing off other’s thoughts. It’s not that I don’t have my own which occasionally gain enough traction to want to be birthed of their own accord, but you really can’t assert much of anything around here without someone objecting, too often mockingly and I’m a sensitive guy and plenty self conscious. While you welcome that or at the least don’t tend to avoid it, that’s because you are Muhammad Ali in this ring.

So I awoke at midnight last night, in fact I was awoken at midnight last night, and since I have a sleep disorder and knew I would not be able to fall back to sleep until I had gotten up, I got up. I made myself a cup of decaffeinated tea with honey made by honey bees who collect their nectar almost exclusively from clover. I swear you can taste and smell a warm, sunny meadow in that stuff, which whether it’s real or imagined is still a delight at midnight, in the dead of winter or at least the start of winter proper. I then sat down at my computer to check out RI and see what was going on. Rather bleary eyed and muddle headed I opened this thread and began somewhat mindlessly mumbling your thoughts in my head. When you got to Nietzsche I knew I had no hope of making any sense out of your ramblings in my current state. I am used to having to reread you, just about all the time, but I accept that because I know I will eventually be rewarded for my efforts. So, knowing and recognizing that my faculties were not up to the task at hand, I plowed ahead anyway, reading both of your posts twice in a rather mechanical fashion, knowing full well I was going to go back to sleep and perhaps there was some chance that my subconscious ruminations might help me when I awoke again and after several cups of coffee made a more earnest attempt at understanding you. So, now here we are, early afternoon and I’ve spent the better part of the day reviewing Ager’s analysis of The Shining and rereading Ciment’s interview of Kubrick and thinking about your own ruminations on the matter before us and I don’t know if I am any closer to some sort of synthesis of all viewpoints which will incorporate my own viewpoint, such as it is, as well. But you know, that really is a project beyond the scope of what I am willing and probably able to do here or anywhere, even on the surface. And that’s without talking about EWS or 2001, which I agree can and probably should be considered as references. It’s not that that is the right thing to do or the only thing to do, it’s just that at this juncture it’s the thing which suggest itself to me as the thing I ought to try but know I will fall woefully short of accomplishing.

Besides which the cut and paste method offers so many more opportunities for clever quips which can stand in for more thoughtful responses.

Ciment - So you don't regard the apparitions as merely a projection of his mental state?

Kubrick - For the purposes of telling the story, my view is that the paranormal is genuine. Jack's mental state serves only to prepare him for the murder, and to temporarily mislead the audience.

Ooo, initially, it looks like he comes thisclose to forgetting to carefully frame his remarks in terms that leave them capable of more than one interpretation in this answer. But on closer examination, it turns out that's just how it looks. As usual.

Apparently Kubrick carefully edited the text of the interview:

These interviews are excerpted from the book "Kubrick" by Michel Ciment; first conducted upon the release of the films they respectively focus upon, they were corrected and approved by Stanley Kubrick for incomplete publication in magazines at those times. Complete versions were published in the French edition of Ciment's book in 1980. In July of 1981, Stanley Kubrick expressed a desire to revise these texts for all foreign editions of the book. It is Kubrick's own expanded English versions which are reprinted here.

So “as usual” is right. However, Ager's central thesis is this:

It certainly appears that Kubrick infused The Shining with subliminal links to cartoons and fairy tales, and there are several possibilities as to why he would do this. One interpretation is that Kubrick was making a mockery of the surface horror story. Neither his films nor his rare interviews gave any indicators that he believed in the supernatural or the afterlife. He spoke and acted like a confirmed atheist.

The other subliminal themes that will be presented in this analysis will further support the assertion that Kubrick was not drawn to The Shining by a desire to make a supernatural horror film. There are some genuinely disturbing sequences, but they are subliminally based around very real psychological devices, not the supernatural. In a nutshell, Kubrick mocked the ghost story and possession themes by transforming them into laughable cartoons and fairy tales at the subliminal level.

... which I think is pretty directly contradicted by the Ciment interview, which is why I think he must not have read the Ciment interview. The fact that Kubrick was acknowledging the supernatural by eventually unambiguously placing it in the film is what makes The Shining distinct among his films, for me at least.

If Kubrick is mocking anything supernatural it is probably King's cartoonish and cliched presentation of it and, given King's popularity, by extension King's readership and everything akin to it in pop culture. I am reluctant to stray from what Kubrick states was his attraction to King's plot in the novel and attribute to him other motivations he leaves unspoken, but I will anyway. After Barry Lyndon Kubrick needed a money maker. Adapting a King novel made that much more likely. At least much more likley than say a work of Kafka.

I actually thought that Ager was right about the non-figurative, non-metaphorical, and non-hypothetical Native American motifs and references. In that they're present and meaningful, and also in that they mean more or less what he understands them to mean.

I’m sort of at a loss to understand how they can be meaningful and non-figurative/non-metaphorical since they rely on their symbolism for their meaning, at least as far as Ager's interpretation is concerned. For instance, if the lodge does not represent America as he says it does, then his thesis sort of falls apart just as Jack has to symbolize European colonizers for his interpretation to have meaning.

Which totally puts me in Rob Ager's debt, irrespective of his tendency to notice them whether they're there or not. Because I'd never noticed them at all, and they both enrich and support my subjective understanding of the general theme of that movie.

I agree and therefore retract my earlier statement about how little I took away from Ager’s analysis and that's not unlike the way I feel about our beloved bafoon HMW and like HMW it's really the particulars that matter. It might be true that whether they're there or not in each and every instance he cites is not relevant to your gratitude or mine, nonetheless, Ager attempts to piece together an interpretation which naturally enough relies on very particular bits of the whole and for that reason it really does make sense to sort those particular bits into categories roughly equivalent to yes, no, maybe as to their value wrt his various theses. I really don't want to do that and thankfully I don't think you or anybody else wants me to do that. Whew. Perhaps it's best to keep the following in mind.

Ciment - The child creates a double to protect himself, whereas his father conjures up beings from the past who are also anticipations of his death.

Kubrick - A story of the supernatural cannot be taken apart and analysed too closely. The ultimate test of its rationale is whether it is good enough to raise the hairs on the back of your neck. If you submit it to a completely logical and detailed analysis it will eventually appear absurd. In his essay on the uncanny,Das Unheimliche, Freud said that the uncanny is the only feeling which is more powerfully experienced in art than in life. If the genre required any justification, I should think this alone would serve as its credentials.

And, for that matter, all Stanley Kubrick movies, since as I subjectively understand them, they all have the same general theme. As well as some combination of the same set of more specifically elaborated-upon themes, typically. Which doesn't at all mean that his work is repetitive or that he doesn't have that much to say, imo. Any more than it would for the ouevre of any other major Western philosopher in the post-enlightenment part of the modern era. In fact....Well. I reserve the right to pretend that I never said this if it turns out to be incredibly stupid on further consideration. Because I haven't done the work of thinking it through yet.

It is true that all of Kubrick’s films have common threads running through them. How could they not? I think this is just a function of the fact that they are all made by Kubrick. That may sound glib, but as an example, as if one was needed, Kubrick says this in the Ciment interview:

Ciment - It seems that you want to achieve a balance between rationality and irrationality, that for you man should acknowledge the presence of irrational forces in him rather than trying to repress them.

Kubrick - I think we tend to be a bit hypocritical about ourselves. We find it very easy not to see our own faults, and I don't just mean minor faults. I suspect there have been very few people who have done serious wrong who have not rationalized away what they've done, shifting the blame to those they have injured. We are capable of the greatest good and the greatest evil, and the problem is that we often can't distinguish between them when it suits our purpose.

I would say that is a central theme which runs through all of his work. I mean it really has to be central to any examination of morality and given that most of human history beginning with cain and abel is to a horrifyingly large extent one long horror show and certainly the history of western expansion and colonization seems to be the zenith of this basic question of murderousness, or nadir as you prefer, it's not surprising that Kubrick can't escape it.

So I might as well just go ahead and float the now risk-free hypothesis that he was pretty close to being as purely Nietzchean as Nietzsche probably would have been had he lived long enough to comment on how well 20th century civilization and the people responsible for it had lived up to the standards, principles and values expressed and advocated for by him in the work he did shortly before it commenced. And had the dimensions of his genius remained fully intact despite his very advanced age and any stresses to which they might have been subject during whatever process would have had to somehow transfer them from the medium of moral philosophy to that of the major motion picture.

Which I'm not just saying because of this. I mean, it's kinda obviously what triggered the whole line of thought to begin with and why bother pretending otherwise. Overall, at least on a casually (and possibly ill-considered) basis, I find it easier and more natural to think of works by Nietzsche and Kubrick as part of a single two-man genre than I do to attempt to understand either of them within the context of the field to which each formally belongs.

I had never considered this to be perfectly frank or certainly I had never given it more than a passing thought. Not because it's not an interesting or potentially very fruitful line of thought, but just because I know my own limitations and I wouldn't have wanted to turture myself with the burden of such an arduous task, even as a thought experiment, which is what I fear it would be rather than easier. I mean I do like to know what my limitations are as evidenced by trying to understand Nietszche on his own terms without the aid of anything other than my own native wits for a little over 20 years. It's telling that the most valuable information I can take away for the effort is to know what I am and am not able to grasp on my own. I mean you cannot know your limits if you've never bumped into them.

And anyway, even though that train of thought was (kinda obviously) triggered by the above-linked, it only really occurred to me in the form that I've been fully intending some day to sit down and do the work of thinking through for almost a decade now when I saw Eyes Wide Shut. Which is genuinely an exponentially more difficult movie to think about than the rest of his work. For me personally, at least. And also by far the hardest to watch. I mean, it's not like any of them are exactly cheery and reassuring. But I'd say that they're all joyous in some sense despite that, each in it's own way and to its own degree.*

*(Per which scale, The Shining is practically a feel-good picture. I mean by my lights not his. Although it's arguably true by his, too. I'm just trying to keep the number of arguments I have yet to do the work of making to a minimum, out of consideration for both myself and the board.)

And I thank you for that. It's now late afternoon and I still have a ways to go.

It is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it; every complaint already contains revenge.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

And so I also apologize.

Except for Eyes Wide Shut. Which I find not only to be an emotionally punishing work from start to finish but also beyond. It's kind of like the proverbial gift that never stops not giving. And very appropriately so, too. Given that it is, after all, a Christmas movie. Part of my point being that though I could so totally be wrong and am not really all that sure that I'm not, I at least think that it's a feature and not a bug that it's as difficult a movie as it is. IOW, I believe that it's willfully and obdurately difficult -- to the point of painful difficulty sometimes -- on just about every level. So it's not as a criticism or even a complaint that I say it's emotionally punishing to watch. I actually think it's a great movie. A masterpiece, even.

It is hard to be understood, especially when one thinks and lives gãngãsrotagati [as the current of the Ganges moves] among men who think and live differently- namely, kúrmagati [as the tortoise moves] or at best “the way frogs walk,” mandúkagati ( I obviously do everything to be “hard to understand” myself!)- and one should be cordially grateful for the good will to some subtlety of interpretation. (BGE, 26) - Nietszche

But I also think that it's a very bleak and all-encompassing indictment that spares no one and implicates everyone, including the director. And also everything, including itself. Albeit the last in a much, much more qualified way than the others. However, that's not really a qualification that can fairly be said to amount to all that much as a bleakness-mitigating factor, imo. Because no true work of art is ever seen as totally and utterly irredeemable from the Kubrickian perspective, at least as far as I can recall. Either intrinsically and extrinsically speaking, in any of his movies. And it's pretty much the only thing that any of them suggest (or at least come very close to suggesting) might have some redemptive qualities and uncompromised positive valuea. So I'd say the comparatively unindicted standing of the aesthetic realm in Eyes Wide Shut is less of an affirmative statement about anything than it is proof that it's possible to issue all-encompassing indictments of everyone and everything including yourself and to some extent your work without actually committing an act of heretical self-betrayal.

Hugh's interpretation notwithstanding. I'd actually like to hear Hugh defend the notion that EWS is some sort of confession about kubrick's involvement in psyops hollywood style at the risk of incurring the wrath of the landlord.

Besides which, qualifications don't really have all that far to go in order to be more qualified than an absolute.

And apart from its very highly evolved (if notably clinically detached) sense of appreciation for truth and beauty of an aesthetic and/or artistic nature, the sense of condemnation in that movie strikes me as pretty fucking absolute. I mean, it somehow manages to condemn you just as much for understanding some or any elements of it as it does for failing to understand some or any elements of it.

But once again, I'm not really all that confident that I even have the response to that movie that I think and feel that I do. Because it's just inherently a very difficult movie. It's totally resolution-proof, for one thing. I mean, you can keep trying to reach a really satisfying conclusion about it if you want to, of course. That's what I plan on doing. But I can't say I didn't warn myself. Because I don't really expect ever to achieve anything by those attempts other than a glimpse of an even more multidimensionally emotionally punishing world than I've yet become aware of. Maybe. I'm not saying there are any guarantees or anything. I just might get lucky. You never know.

EWS sits out right now at the top of a pile by my dvd player. I've been meaning to rewatch it for some time. I can't help but be bothered by the idea that he did not get the final cut. At least it's my understanding that we might not be looking at exactly what he wanted us to look at. Not that you needed any more complexity.

_____________________

I've said this before in at least on other post, I know. But to me, in its most stripped down and essential form, the entirety of all Kubrickian thought is as fully and powerfully expressed in the four or five seconds before and after the match-cut at @ 5.27 here as it is anywhere else. Though that's not exactly a totally unique and original observation, I admit. Also, it's a hyperbolic overstatement. Let's say a little more realistically maybe..."in the six or so minutes starting with the second use of "Thus Spake Zarathustra" at @ 2.01 to however far that takes you past the match cut into "The Blue Danube" sequence. Or, what the hell, just watch the whole movie.

And all the rest of them as well.

And btw, I think it's very unfair that Richard Strauss enjoys such a disproportionately high meaning-of-2001-to-composition ratio, relative to Johann Strauss. And equally unfair that just because the "Thus Spake Zarathustra" at @2.01 in the linked clip is a callback to its use in the title footage, it's generally only associated with the connotations it acquires in the former. Which it doesn't really have at the beginning. Or anyway, wouldn't, if it hadn't become totally impossible not to think of the second use when you hear the first decades ago, at the very least. And probably within an hour of the premiere. Maybe before, if the promotional campaign included TV spots. Which I have no clue as to. Or, for that matter, if pre-release TV spots were even a routine part of movie promotion in 1968.

I like to believe the kazoo can somehow serve a dual purpose of functioning as smoking paraphernalia

And....Well, the whole thing is a psyop, of course. But that should go without saying.

They say a vampire can't cross your threshold unless you invite him.

Okay. I take it back.

Indian giver.

I couldn't help but occasionally compare Ager's analysis to the sort of thing Hugh does, if that makes sense. I mean, for instance, the native american angle. Ager adopts a thesis and then goes to incredible lengths to try to support it with ever more distorted minutia. Ya know? Like for instance, Crothers does not look even vaguely native american. Or for another instance, every character comes to represent just about every other character in Ager's analysis based on the slightest of resemblences, which would be ok if the entire thing was the dream of one person, which in a way it is, namely Kubrick's, but I don't think that is what is going on.

It does make sense. But the pattern Ager sees not only really is there, but also really was put there by Kubrick and really does represent roughly what Ager understands it to, I'd say. So he's at least fundamentally correctly oriented and appropriately alert to the essential role played by the reciprocal relationship between context and content wrt metaphorically and symbolically conveyed meaning. It's just that for some reason, his ability to make those distinctions seems to have an auto-immune disorder that incapacitates him for the making of any further reliably meaningful distinctions almost immediately subsequent to his first exercise of it.

Well, exactly and couldn't we say the same of someone else we know and love?

In the end Kubrick intends ambiguity, the bastard. The Shining has always struck me as an anomaly among Kubrick's work. While much of the weirdness in the film can be explained with nightmares and madness, not all of it can be explained in that way. I mean, how the hell did Jack get out of the pantry?

He's an artist and a human being. So there's no feat of miraculous creativity he's not capable of, as long as it's all guaranteed to lead to acts of senseless carnage and destruction that culminate in the destruction of everything he's created along with everything natural that he and his fellow men haven't already destroyed during the inherently unnatural act of creating other stuff, as we can safely presume they've been doing incessantly since the dawn of man via inferential reference to stuff like the near-genocide visited on Native Americans by Americans of Western European descent without which this land, which was made for you and me, could not have been created.

Alright, alright. So it is there, but there's no way in hell that Jack tossing that tennis ball at the navajo tapestry is supposed to symbolize the swinging axe he wields later on and the thereby the genocide of native americans.

I suppose at least one other thing I am grateful to Ager for is pointing out that piece of paper in Jack’s hand in that photo from 1921. I don't think I ever would have noticed it otherwise. What the hell is that I wonder? He holds it in the way that a magician would palm something, except that he is holding it up for the viewer to see. Damn you Stanley Kubrick.

________________________________________________________

Well, it's now early evening. I didn't say nearly as much as I intended to. I've got 12 windows open at last count. One of them being this which I'll leave off with for now.

[IanEye]

hilarious, Ian

kudos
....

thanks for going along for the ride!

[compared2what?]

Alright, alright. So it is there, but there's no way in hell that Jack tossing that tennis ball at the navajo tapestry is supposed to symbolize the swinging axe he wields later on and the thereby the genocide of native americans.

No, of course not. The Native American theme so rightly noticed by Rob Ager....Excuse me one moment, please.
_____________

I’m sort of at a loss to understand how they can be meaningful and non-figurative/non-metaphorical since they rely on their symbolism for their meaning, at least as far as Ager's interpretation is concerned.

I meant "non-figurative/non-metaphorical" in its standard "non-imagined-by-Rob-Ager-to go-with-the-real-references-he-noticed"sense. As you perfectly well knew. Quit being so crabby.
______________

As I was saying, the Native American motif so rightly noticed by Rob Ager is a way overdetermined component in Rob Ager's analysis of the film, I quite agree.

Alright, alright. So it is there, but there's no way in hell that Jack tossing that tennis ball at the navajo tapestry is supposed to symbolize the swinging axe he wields later on and the thereby the genocide of native americans.

I agree. I'd say that the visual references to Native American culture are there. And also that they're a symbolic reminder of its destruction by people of another culture in order to take possession of the ground on which the foundations of the land-of-opportunity-plenty-and-privilege culture -- ie, then-modern American culture -- to which the movie's characters not-so-comfortably-or-rewardingly belong were laid at a much later stage of its development.

During a historical era that -- chance being a fine thing -- coincided with the very same robber-baron period in which the kind of enormous luxury hotel at which those characters are staying for the winter were built. And not a moment too soon, from the point of view of Americans who had extravagant Fourth of July parties there a few decades later, where their every whim was catered to by slavishly and passionately devoted servants who didn't think twice about overlooking the amoral excesses and bad acts of f their culturally defined superiors for pretty much the same reasons that most present-day Americans don't really think twice about overlooking present-day American amoral excess and bad acts by the privileged classes above their own, at least on a day-to-day, making-a-living-and-going-along-to-get-along basis. American culture doesn't really provide them with a better alternative. But luckily, we're all proud to be Americans, who are, as a matter of cultural orthodoxy, never bad or amoral. That's just not the American character. Never has been. But I digress. Where was I?

Oh, right. Native American genocide and Rob Agers's contention that in The Shining, Kubrick is saying that both the evil in the hotel and the evil in Jack arise from some kind of cultural complicity with the people who committed it, long, long ago. I think that's true, as far as it goes. But it doesn't go very far and certainly isn't, like, the primary focus or anything. And I also think that you can get a pretty clear read on what Kubrick believed himself to be making a movie about by looking at what's missing from the movie that's present in the book. Same goes double for what's present in the movie that's absent from the book. Because, by definition, that's pure Stanley Kubrick talking.



The wiki entry has all the numerous comparative details, somewhere in here. That reads as if I were being listlessly irritable with you, which I'm not at all, btw. In fact, this whole post kind of does. I apologize for that. I'm actually very much engaged and having fun. I'm just dull poster tonight. And tired. I'm sorry, honey. Try to pretend that I'm making this last point with all the verve and good spirits that ordinarily attend being in company one enjoys. Because I am on the inside, I swear it.

This:

It certainly appears that Kubrick infused The Shining with subliminal links to cartoons and fairy tales, and there are several possibilities as to why he would do this. One interpretation is that Kubrick was making a mockery of the surface horror story. Neither his films nor his rare interviews gave any indicators that he believed in the supernatural or the afterlife. He spoke and acted like a confirmed atheist.

The other subliminal themes that will be presented in this analysis will further support the assertion that Kubrick was not drawn to The Shining by a desire to make a supernatural horror film. There are some genuinely disturbing sequences, but they are subliminally based around very real psychological devices, not the supernatural. In a nutshell, Kubrick mocked the ghost story and possession themes by transforming them into laughable cartoons and fairy tales at the subliminal level.


... which I think is pretty directly contradicted by the Ciment interview, which is why I think he must not have read the Ciment interview. The fact that Kubrick was acknowledging the supernatural by eventually unambiguously placing it in the film is what makes The Shining distinct among his films, for me at least.

I think you're wrong. And not because once again you've forgotten about FM 33-1. Although you have, you know. And you are so busted, so don't even try to deny it. Rather because I don't actually see him acknowledging the supernatural by eventually placing it unambiguously in the film anywhere in that interview. He acknowledges that the film has a supernatural story. And you could say that Jack gets out of the pantry naturally. Because he regresses to his natural state. Which isn't solely the state of American man, per Kubrick. It's just the state of man. Civilization enables him to overlook it most of the time, however. Even though that's the state to which all civilization aspires.

And now I'm repeating myself and will shut up. It's capable of being understood as metaphorical stage business is my point. That's how I understand it. But you don't have to, if you don't want to. You know that, right?

[compared2what?]

Okay. I take it back.

I couldn't help but occasionally compare Ager's analysis to the sort of thing Hugh does, if that makes sense. I mean, for instance, the native american angle. Ager adopts a thesis and then goes to incredible lengths to try to support it with ever more distorted minutia. Ya know? Like for instance, Crothers does not look even vaguely native american. Or for another instance, every character comes to represent just about every other character in Ager's analysis based on the slightest of resemblences, which would be ok if the entire thing was the dream of one person, which in a way it is, namely Kubrick's, but I don't think that is what is going on.

It does make sense. But the pattern Ager sees not only really is there, but also really was put there by Kubrick and really does represent roughly what Ager understands it to, I'd say. So he's at least fundamentally correctly oriented and appropriately alert to the essential role played by the reciprocal relationship between context and content wrt metaphorically and symbolically conveyed meaning. It's just that for some reason, his ability to make those distinctions seems to have an auto-immune disorder that incapacitates him for the making of any further reliably meaningful distinctions almost immediately subsequent to his first exercise of it.

In the end Kubrick intends ambiguity, the bastard. The Shining has always struck me as an anomaly among Kubrick's work. While much of the weirdness in the film can be explained with nightmares and madness, not all of it can be explained in that way. I mean, how the hell did Jack get out of the pantry?

He's an artist and a human being. So there's no feat of miraculous creativity he's not capable of, as long as it's all guaranteed to lead to acts of senseless carnage and destruction that culminate in the destruction of everything he's created along with everything natural that he and his fellow men haven't already destroyed during the inherently unnatural act of creating other stuff, as we can safely presume they've been doing incessantly since the dawn of man via inferential reference to stuff like the near-genocide visited on Native Americans by Americans of Western European descent without which this land, which was made for you and me, could not have been created.

Silly.

will have to quote you, c2w (w/ your permission, of course); if i'm looking for brilliant exposition,
need look no further (farther)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmWfTDZvvkM





....

Thank you.

[brainpanhandler]

And I also think that you can get a pretty clear read on what Kubrick believed himself to be making a movie about by looking at what's missing from the movie that's present in the book. Same goes double for what's present in the movie that's absent from the book. Because, by definition, that's pure Stanley Kubrick talking.

I suspect that is true. I've not read the novel. The only king novel I've ever read was The Stand and I think that's because I couldnt find anything else to read. Here's the wiki on the overlook hotel:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Overlook_Hotel

And btw i take exception to this:

Ciment - There are similar movie cliches about apparitions.

Kubrick - From the more convincing accounts I have read of people who have reported seeing ghosts, they were invariably described as being as solid and as real as someone actually standing in the room. The movie convention of the see-through ghost, shrouded in white, seems to exist only in the province of art.

since the ghost I saw was translucent and shrouded in white.

[Cordelia]

I remember reading the essay about The Shining's hidden meaning of genocide by William Blakemore in 1987, when it appeared in The Washington Post.

FWIW, and maybe it's already referred to somewhere in this thread or another on Kubrick. If so, sorry for the repeat.
http://www.ravebyte.com/shine/meaning.htm